The Eye is Listening, the Ear is Seeing (Grammar of Space)
2007
Leveling
2007
International Art Workshops, Sława Wlkp. 2005;
Aneks Gallery, Poznań 2006
(video installation: TV, video projection on wall)
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“Holding the spirit level in both hands, I do my best to stay level. I become part of th instrument, defining new planes of references which are determined by my own parameters.
I hold the spirit level tight, trying hard to keep the gas bubble immersed in a green liquid staying as close to its zero position as possible.
“Staying level” stops being a game and becomes an existential act”.
Natalia Brandt
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2007
galerie nord, berlin 2007
(instalacja wideo/ video installation)
Golden Means
2009
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In the painting installation Golden Means the artist explored the issue of modernist traditions, of the possibilities of their reinterpretation and continuation in contemporary art. She applied – in a simple and tongue-in-cheek manner – the classical principle of the golden mean to various pictorial traditions, from Impressionism to Postmodernism.
Four Sides of the World
2008
Reminiscence
2008-2009
Colour-Things
2009
Patriots of the World, Unite!
2009
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As a part of her graduation project, the artist asked: ‘What would happen if the patriotism of all countries was represented by one flag?’. In a project named Patriots of the World, Unite! she referred in a subversive way to the old communist slogan. In this multi-media work (painting, drawing, photography, video), the artist, in one painting, linked flags of various countries and nations. On a square canvas she placed successive layers of rectangular flags. Each time, the new flag was linked to fragments of two previous flags. The placing of layers was documented in a series of photographs and a video recording. In random configurations (the order of painting was entirely arbitrary), various signs and their meanings became merged. In accidental constellations of forms and colours, the symbolism of particular flags blurred. Their number rose to over 100 flags layered on one painting, and the same number of photographs. The project obviously referred to the politics of identity based on national emblems – between the manifestation of national determination and the rhetoric of globalisation, between nationality and transnationality, locality and dislocation. The utopia of transnational patriotism was extended by the artist into a series of drawings, in which she overlaid the lines marking the borders of colourful forms which build a flag.
Placelessness
2011
więcej
my place not my place my non-place
your place not your place your non-place
his/her place not his/her place his/her non-place
our place not our place our non-place
your place not your place your non-place
their place not their place their non-place
places non-places
Closed Circuit
2011
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The project included a series of large-format, black-and-white photographs of zoo cages and a sound installation. Empty, barred, the cages become a metaphor of all devices of isolation and segregation. Embodying, like prison cells, the architecture of power, cages are one of the political technologies of exercising it. Social reformers believe that their disciplining character transcends penal practice; the image of the cage supports the asymmetry between triumphant knowledge and ignorance. The paternalism that at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries sanctioned public ‘ethnographic’ displays of ‘savages’, roadshows of caged human specimens. In Brandt’s images there are no imprisoned, enslaved or tamed animals or people, just empty spaces of isolation, like in Piranesi’s drawings showing the prison itself, with its dreary, oppressive architecture. In the images of the empty cages the visibility principle turns towards the systems of supervision. The visualisation is accompanied by a sound installation – a five-channel recording of overlapping, whispering voices, monotonously repeating” ‘Speak in whispers!’. The sound of whispering voices was emitted from megaphones- in the past, an inherent part of prison surveillance, ideological indoctrination, educational training at school, and discipline in factories.
Desegregation
2012
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“The spatial metal letters form the “DESEGREGATION” inscription. Each letter pulls magnetically – “segregates”, hundreds of radomly placed small letters. Each magnetic letter holds small letters from a word: “DESEGREGATION”, spelled out in a language of one of the countries which in its’ history committed various acts of colonialism: English, Turkish, Duch, Portuguese, German, Spanish, Russian, Dunnish, French, Italian, Polish, Swedish”.
Natalia Brandt
Controlled Images
2014
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“An acrylic painting on canvas (135 x 190 cm), two neon-words composed of thee antonyms: “goodbad” and “badgood”. Two looped videos (12’00”) depicting watchtowers with neon words: “bad” and “good” in all day light”.
Natalia Brandt
